A printing device for carrying out printing on a printing object, such as paper, film, cloth or the like, has been known.
In general, such printing is carried out by applying an ink containing a coloring agent and an aqueous solvent onto a printing object so that a printed object is formed. For this reason, the printed object immediately after the printing process is in a wet state containing the aqueous solvent, and the corresponding aqueous solvent needs to be removed from the printed object.
In the printed object immediately after the printing process from which the aqueous solvent needs to be removed as described above, when much time is required for removing the aqueous solvent, bleeding of ink onto the printing object due to insufficient drying of ink, flocculation of ink, mixed color with an ink having another color, retransferring to the printing object caused by an ink transferring process from a contact member to the printing surface and the like tend to occur, thereby causing a problem of degradation in image quality. Therefore, as the printing device, such a printing device provided with a drying device has been developed so as to dry the printed object immediately after the printing process.
For example, an ink-jet recording device (for example, see Patent Literature 1), which is an ink-jet recording device capable of continuously recording on the two surfaces of a web, and provided with a plurality of recording heads installed therein, a drying device for drying the web on which a recording was made by the recording head and guide rollers for guiding the web, and another ink-jet recording device (for example, see Patent Literature 2), which is provided with a line head disposed on the recording surface side of a web, guide rollers for guiding the web, a suction mechanism disposed on the non-recording surface side of the web, and a drying device for drying the web on which the recording was made by the recording head, have been known.
Moreover, a method for constituting a liquid coating device (for example, see Patent Literature 3), which includes steps of providing a drying unit including a liquid coating unit having a first transporting part for transporting a medium and a liquid coating part for applying a liquid onto the medium transported by the first transporting device, a second transporting part for transporting the medium onto which the liquid is applied by the liquid coating part and a drying unit for drying the liquid applied onto the medium, with the drying unit being designed so that by controlling the second transporting part, a tension to be applied to the medium inside the drying unit can be controlled, has been known in which in the case when a transporting path of a medium is formed between the liquid coating unit and the drying unit by connecting the liquid coating unit and the drying unit, or in the case when a transporting path of a medium is formed between the two drying units by connecting the two drying units, an adjusting part between the connected two units is provided so that the transporting operation of the medium in one of the units and the transporting operation of the medium in the other unit are independently controlled, and the number of the drying units to be provided in the liquid coating device is determined depending on the kinds of media to be transported.